This invention relates to a manually playable electronic musical instrument and, more particularly, to an electronic musical instrument of this type having an improved tone pitch designation unit.
In an electronic musical instrument generating a tone signal having a tone pitch corresponding to a play position (i.e., a position at which the performer's finger has touched) on a performance operator, the invention is directed to an improvement according to which means for selecting or establishing a desired play position-tone pitch conversion characteristic is provided and various performance effects such as portamento and glissando can be achieved with a relatively simple structure by designating a tone pitch in the performance operator in accordance with a selected or established position-tone pitch conversion characteristic.
A keyboard has generally been employed as a tone pitch designation means in an electronic musical instrument.
In an electronic musical instrument using a keyboard, one can play a normal music piece and glissando but cannot play portamento in which the tone pitch changes at a desired speed. For realizing such portamento performance, there has been proposed an electronic musical instrument in which a bar-like touch operator (called a "portamento bar") is provided and a continuous tone pitch change is realized by touching this bar-like operator in a sliding manner (e.g., Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 9947/1975).
For achieving various performances including performances of a normal music piece, glissando and portamento in the prior art electronic musical instruments, a plurality of tone pitch designation means such as a keyboard and a portamento bar must be provided in parallel and this will result in complexity in the structure and performance of the electronic musical instrument.
Further, since each key in the keyboard has a determined tone pitch, the glissando performance is limited within determined tone pitches and it is not possible to perform glissando while varying the tone pitch as in a harp.
It is an object of the invention to provide an electronic musical instrument capable of simulating various performance effects with a simple structure and operation.